New London artist Hugo Anderson remembers attending elementary school in the 1950s, at a time when students all over the United States were preparing for a nuclear attack by hiding under their desks and covering their heads.
Those infamous “duck-and-cover” drills were particularly unsettling for Anderson, who grew up in Roswell, N.M. A few years earlier, the development and testing of the atomic bomb had taken place in Los Alamos and nearby White Sands. Anderson’s uncle told him about seeing a test blast from his kitchen window while he was warming a baby bottle, more than 180 miles from one of the sites.
“He said the papers claimed it was an ammunition dump exploding, but he was sure it was much more than that,” Anderson recalled.
Last summer, Anderson re-read the Pulitzer prizewinning book The Making of the Atomic Bomb by historian Richard Rhodes, and it inspired his new exhibit of abstract paintings, “Growing Up With the Atomic Bomb.”
The exhibit is on display at Bar Harbor Bank and Trust at 321 Main St. in New London from now through April. A reception will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Friday as part of the Center for the Arts First Friday Gallery Night.
Anderson has been a working artist since 1970, when he stopped off in Paris on his way home from the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone to see a retrospective of the works of Henri Matisse.
“Since that day … all I have wanted to do is make art,” he said.
Anderson moved to New London from Santa Monica, Calif., in 2017.
In an email Q&A, Anderson reflected on his art career, the 75th anniversary of the atomic bomb this year, and the lurking nuclear threat that never really went away. The exchange has been condensed and edited.
Question: Can you share a couple of memories of growing up with the bomb?
Answer: In 1956, B-52 bombers circled Roswell and Walker Air Force Base, the largest Strategic Air Command base in the country at the time, for one (entire) night while we waited to see if we would go to war with Soviets over the failed Hungarian revolt. No one slept that night.
In 1962, teachers brought TV sets to school to watch as Soviet ships approached the United States’ blockade of Cuba over the placement of Soviet missiles there. The world stood still while we wondered if we would see another day.
For most of my childhood, I felt (as if) I lived in the middle of the bullseye.
Q: Do you think we’ve learned anything from 75 years of nuclear history?
A: I have not felt the nuclear threat as much since the ’50s and ’60s as I feel it today. With the best of intentions, science led us to the atom, and World War II led us to the development of the bomb. With its creation, we have made a weapon against which there is no defense. We need sober deliberations by all parties if we are to exist. Movies like Dr. Strangelove and On the Beach seem only too relevant once again.
Q: What are some of the media and techniques that you’ve worked with in your 50-year career?
A: I really began by learning to draw (self-taught) as a teenager. I learned to paint in my 20s with some classes at Northwestern University, while getting my degree in political science. Living in New York City in the mid-’80s introduced me to found objects discarded on the street, which became sculpture in my studio. After I received my MFA in sculpture from SUNY-Albany in 1988, I started drawing people and then painting landscapes. In both cases observation of the real world was my source: portraits and mountain landscapes from photos taken on climbs in the Colorado Rockies. When I returned to painting after graduate school, I began painting from memory: childhood memories of New Mexico. The landscapes became more abstract.
Q: What’s inspired you to create art all these years?
A: I love to go to work every day in the studio. Being a largely self-taught painter, art for me has always been about problem solving.
Q: Have there been any side projects along the way?
A: There were brief sojourns in banking and law school; one year each to appease my parents’ career wishes. I simply found art so much more intellectually challenging that it was an easy ultimate choice. It’s important to love what you do.